Obama's dialog on dialog

Gregory Rodriguez:

Barack Obama loves reconciliation, but it isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sometimes it isn't even possible, and let's be honest, it isn't always the point.

About six weeks ago, during his "More Perfect Union" speech on race that some heralded as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln, Obama had a choice between reconciliation and renunciation, and, true to form, he chose the former. He protested that he could "no more disown" the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. than he could disown "the black community" or his own (sometimes politically incorrect) white grandmother. Really?

Right about now, his much-heralded tutorial on race relations is looking more like Richard Nixon's "Checkers" speech than the Gettysburg Address. Because, after last Tuesday's formal renunciation of his ties to Wright -- and presumably also his white grandmother and all blacks -- Obama looks not only tardy but thoroughly hypocritical. Didn't Obama's vaunted speech call for an open national dialogue on race, a subject he said was too important to ignore? Didn't he urge us to address those "old wounds" that still fester today? Whether you agree with him or not, isn't that exactly what Wright was doing last week when he reappeared in public to make more provocative statements on race and politics?

That's no way to start a dialogue, Mr. Obama. You don't call on people to talk and then renounce someone for speaking his mind. Because Wright didn't really say anything new last week, it seems that his only new sin is that he called Obama's bluff and, well, sparked another national dialogue on race. Which, of course, points to the absurdity of Obama's call for more racial dialogue in the first place.

Obama evidently hoped a racial dialogue would amount to a tidy academic seminar in the well-behaved, elite Ivy League, about home mortgage lending rates, test scores or economic opportunity. Presumably, after the lecture there would be time for questions and answers, maybe even some light refreshments, and no one who mattered would go on the attack.

Or better yet, maybe he imagined one of those interminably self-congratulatory racial roundtables at which the self-appointed black representative speaks to the Latino, Jewish and Asian chieftains to discuss their peoples' grievances, after which they'd all shake hands, pat themselves on the backs for "talking together" and herald a new day in race relations. Maybe they'd air the proceedings on public television or, at the very least, National Public Radio.

...

He was not really looking for a dialog on race. He was looking to change the subject for Wrights rants. When Wright to continued to rant the scam was revealed.